


SIX

by Grendoc



Category: Watchmen (2009), Watchmen (Comic), Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Walter Lives, Anyways I hate tagging shit so enjoy, Boxer Rorschach, Dan Dreiberg/Rorschach - Freeform, DanRor, Daniel is very traumatized, Hehehe, I know you have no self worth but you really suck at this, Laurie is too good to have to deal with this shit, M/M, Nite Owl II/Rorschach - Freeform, Nite Owl/Rorschach - Freeform, Niteschach - Freeform, Oh also, Rorschach Feels, Rorschach Has Issues, Rorschach is back and didn't tell anybody, Thanks Rorschach, Walter Kovacs/Dan Dreiberg - Freeform, post-death, post-watchmen, resurrection AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:35:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24492853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grendoc/pseuds/Grendoc
Summary: It didn’t sound right, but it sounded like something Rorschach would say. Something ancient drops into Daniel’s guts. Curdles, there.Eats him alive.
Relationships: Dan Dreiberg/Rorschach
Comments: 19
Kudos: 68





	1. SCALP

Sometimes, Daniel isn’t sure where the anger comes from.

He knows where to put it, though. At least – he thought he did.

Laurie tried to help. Laurie was good to him, and Daniel forgot how to feel like he deserved it. He forgot how to be good back. He forgot how not to be angry. He forgot, sometimes, that when he crept out in the middle of the night to beat up bad guys, Rorschach wasn’t going to be waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. Once, he forgot he wasn’t supposed to wear the suit anymore; got spotted. Almost got caught.

Daniel didn’t blame Laurie, when she left. When she couldn’t look after him anymore. She had Laurie to look out for, first, after all – something she wasn’t going to learn there. Not at his side. Not tethered to him, and his soft lies about his busted, bloody fists, come dawn.

She couldn’t understand him. He understood her, helped her pack, and felt a hole where the only man who could have grasped this should have been.

Standing in the empty doorway, after, Daniel waited for a _“told-you-so.”_ The gruff voice never came, so he turned and went inside.

Now he’s here. The usual redhead is here, too, beating on a sandbag with no gloves. His knuckles are raw. Dan can’t tell what’s blood and what’s broken skin, but he’s watching the back of the fiery head, watching sweat roll down the freckled nape of a slender neck, watching a man who pretends he isn’t watching him back.

Every Thursday, Daniel goes to this gym. Needs something to beat that he can get away with in broad daylight. Every Thursday, boxing matches are held here – amateur ring. But people take bets anyway, and Daniel’s started wasting his money. He goes all in on the redhead, when the redhead’s in a round. Come time to collect, Dan refuses – even though the redhead always wins. _Keep it,_ is what he tells them. _I only pitch in on principle._ He’s weird, that way, but he isn’t trouble. The meatheads like Dan for that.

Rorschach would hate it, he thinks – find the practice cowardice; tell him he gives too much of himself and throws it all away – but times are hard, and Daniel isn’t sore on cash. He’s gotten as bored of his money as he has of the toys he’s bought with it.

What’s a ship without a copilot?

What’s a suit without a mask?

By 8, everyone’s hair is wet from the showers. Everyone's still bruised. Everyone still smells. Daniel, as always, waits for the redhead to leave just so he can hold open one of the double doors for him, and maybe get a look at his face. The redhead, as always, changes course. Pushes through the door that’s still closed.

Today, another man follows close behind. Smiles at Dan. Seems nice. Brunet, tall. Handsome. Practically stepping on the redhead’s heels as he walks. There isn’t conversation between them, but there doesn’t seem to be tension, either – a convincing comfort in the silence.

Until he sees dark hair and gory scalp smeared across the alleyway, Daniel assumes they’re friends.


	2. STUPID

Daniel was always intelligent, but he was never very smart.

When he sees the redhead stained up to his tank top in viscera, his first instinct shouldn’t be to approach him. He never should’ve approached him to begin with – never should’ve let a sole hint of familiarity guide him into this kind of obsession. But he did. And it has. And he’s grabbing for the man, now, worried for him; gripping his shoulder, yanking him around so they’re face to face. His eyes are wide. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but feels like he has to see.

His own behavior reminds him of somebody. It scares him a lot more than the fist wheeling suddenly towards his nose, or the thin bow of the redhead’s lips peeled back over his gums, like a vicious animal.

It stops before it hits his face, shards of teeth dripping from small, fair knucklebones.

Daniel swallows. Hard.

He’s almost relieved to see the rage leave his stranger’s face. He isn’t relieved when it isn’t replaced by anything. No recognition, no gratitude, no fear. Just delicate blue. Jewels, deep in the skull. Dead. Shark-eyed. Sable lashes sweeping high cheekbones – beautiful and gaunt and haunting and _dead._

The word feels like a needle in his spine. It’s the only word he can think of. Luckily, the smaller man speaks first, so Dan can stop thinking about anything at all.

“Don’t need help.” Comes hoarse. Dry. The body on the ground isn’t handsome anymore. It writhes, gurgles in protest, as if pleading for help. Redhead stomps backwards. Shuts it up. “Some people can’t keep hands to selves.” Sound of fingerbones breaking under shoe. Whimper. Silence – “That’s all.”

Daniel isn’t sure who the threat is directed towards. His hand falls away from the offended shoulder, and he’s shocked to see that his grip’s left a bruise.

“Should get cleaned up, at least.” The cogs in his brain have stalled. “Don’t know what kind of diseases you might catch, open wounds in a place like this.”

His lips twitch down towards a scruffy chin. Salt and pepper. Grey at his hairline, curling at the ears. He still wears his glasses, but he doesn’t feel like Daniel, anymore.

The stranger watches his mouth for a very long time.

“You’re tired.”

It’s not a comment Dan would expect a stranger to make. Little too bold. Upfront. Unrelated to topic. Then again – it’s not a comment Dan would expect Rorschach to make, either. His partner had a way with words; mostly, a way with keeping them out of his mouth, unless prompted. What would’ve prompted him, here?

Worry?

Surely not.

“Unsure of implication,” the man continues, and Daniel feels something rock inside his chest. “Invitation to join you? You’re certain of that? Just walked in on –” side-stepping. One long, pointed gesture to the mass of meat that used to be a man.

Body’s gone still.

“— This. And are opening doors to – me. That right?” Daniel nods. The stranger’s face is unreadable. Daniel stops nodding.

“Stupid?”

“Very stupid.”

“Would be stupider of you to try anything, though.” He lowers his glasses, peers down at the redhead over the brim. The redhead peers up, crosses his arms, and Daniel swears he sees the ghost of a smile in his eyes. “But you strike me as somebody with a little more sense than that, unless you really feel like proving me wrong.” The redhead tilts his head, slightly to the right, and hums.

There was a time he would’ve shrunken away from men like this. Now is not that time.

“Don’t flatter me.”

Without further protest, he makes his way to Daniel’s side and joins him for the journey home.


	3. SIN

When they reach the old black doors, the redhead’s face falls flat.

_“Figures.”_

Dan turns – gives him a strange look, as if offended. It’s the same place he’s hung his hat for the better part of the last thirty years – what’s wrong with it? What could possibly be wrong?

“What?”

“Nothing.” Quick response. Curt. Disinterested in self-explanation. “Rich boy,” says the stranger, thumbs jammed into the waistband of his sweats. “Nice neighborhood, is all.”

Daniel says, “sure,” and tries to waive the growing seed of suspicion in his breast.

They enter. Dark, narrow hallway into reasonably sized kitchen. He starts off giving the grand tour, but falls silent – redhead’s already made his way to the table and sat, like he knew where he was going before he ever came in. The hair on the back of Daniel’s neck stands up. Hair on his arms, too: suddenly cold.

“Coffee?”

If Rorschach were around, Daniel’s sure he would’ve called his optimism delusional.

_"Hurm.”_

... Or maybe not.

Dan shrugs off his coat; drapes it over the back of a long-neglected dining chair. “I have some sugar cubes to drop in, if you like.”

“Everybody likes coffee with – sugar. Milk. Except vegans, serial killers.”

It didn’t sound right, but it sounded like something Rorschach would say. Something ancient drops into Daniel’s guts. Curdles, there.

Eats him alive.

“Coffee,” the stranger finally ascertains, as if urging Daniel to get off the subject. It’s hard to get off anything when the man stretches, though. His shirt flimsily follows direction of his arms, riding over the pale, freckled belly beneath. A thin stomach. Flat. Toned. Dan doesn’t know what he was expecting, but bare skin wasn’t high on the list. He means to glance and ends up ogling. Drinks it in a whole lot longer than he ought to be.

An odd-shaped scar curls around the pit of a bellybutton. Orange hair curling below, disappearing beneath the waistband. It’s not the only visible trauma to the skin, but it’s the darkest, the most glaring, and Daniel knows he shouldn’t ask – knows he should just keep his lips zipped and put the coffee on –

“Knife fight?” he asks, and mentally slaps himself upside the head.

“Chains,” says the redhead … “Fire, maybe. Glass? … Which one?” Taken, now, by the manner of self-inspection, the redhead rolls the hem up and peels his shirt further over his chest. A wicked burn stretches the length of a rib. It’s all Daniel has not to wince. “Can’t remember all of them.”

God.

( _The year is 1960-something, and the Catholic church in West Village, Manhattan is burning to the ground. Rorschach bursts out of the doors in flames, panic coming off him as thick as the smoke. He says he’s fine, he says he’s not fine, he says it doesn’t matter, and then he kills the reverend. Daniel had blamed him for the violence, but he’d never thought to ask him why._ )

The color drains from Daniel’s face, and he can’t seem to look at the stranger, anymore. It’s easier to turn away. Reach for some mugs in the cupboard.

**God.**

“Sounds like you’ve made a habit of turning creeps into hamburger meat.” He sets the cups down hard and makes himself flinch. Checks the ceramic for chipping – none. “Used to know a guy who did the same thing. Might’ve liked you.”

Might’ve. Rorschach didn’t really like anyone, though.

Anyone besides Dan.

“Most people don’t,” replies the stranger.

“... He wasn’t just anybody, though.”


	4. SUGAR

“If he was anything like me,” promises the stranger, “I – wouldn’t have liked him.” The voice is soft, struggling, especially around self-referentials. _Me. I._ “Would’ve gotten sick of – both of us.” _Us._ Like it’s difficult. Like it’s a word the man made up.

The redhead reaches for the sugar jar and pulls out a cube just to fiddle with the wrapper.

“Creeps – one word for it,” wringing his hands, nail finding plastic edge. Peeling it. Folding it back up – “Mostly don’t … appreciate … being propositioned in locker room,” peeling it again. “When you’re small …”

“People push you around,” Dan supplies; the stranger nods.

“Think they can,” he clarifies. “Mistaken – underestimate me.”

A pause. The stranger’s eyes search Daniel’s face. Daniel’s search the stranger’s. They’ve both come to their own conclusions, though neither have spoken a word of them.

“You’re pale,” says the stranger.

“Just cold.”

He feels like an insect under a looking glass. Bug on a pin – squirming. Doesn’t like it at all. But the coffee’s ready, and he’s quick to pour it, glad for something to do that isn’t looking back into those icy, all-knowing eyes. Something stirs in the darkest corner of his mind: a rainy day, a café window, walking with Laurie in the night …

By the time he sets the mug down on the table in front of the stranger, his hands are trembling.

“You haven’t … seen me around before, have you?” It’s a bad question, but a better one than _Have we met?_ One’s incriminating, the other’s just … strange. Daniel’d pass himself off as socially awkward over criminal any day of the week.

“Few times,” says the redhead, and Dan’s heart drops into his ass. Redhead shrugs. Rolls his shoulders, rolls his neck. He acts like nothing matters, but something bitter sits against the roof of his mouth, lying in wait to snap. Creeps into his tone. His eyes narrow, and he sips his coffee raw and hot and black. Glares down into it, like he’s looking for answers to a question he doesn’t have the balls to ask – “Am never in … a neighborhood … someone like you is used to being in.”

He’s forgotten his sugar cube.

“You’re a fast walker,” he carries on, “but we’ve never. Really. _Met.”_

“Oh,” says Daniel, and for awhile, nothing more.

He’s slow to serve himself a cup, and when he does retrieve it, he doesn’t sit. Blankly stares at the drink, watching the milk cloud, never really seeing it.

“I was – an uppity, um, prick. When I was younger.”

_“Mm-hm.”_

The stranger fixes those cold blue eyes back onto him, and Daniel’s soul shrinks like a devil on judgement day. He’s sweating. Takes an instinctive gulp of coffee. Burns his mouth and throat and his face scrunches up, trying not to yelp in pain. There’s nothing he can say to make it all better – he wants there to be. But a younger Daniel’d been curled lip and upturned nose in the low-income neighborhoods, and for all of Rorschach’s comparative faults, that had always been one of Daniel’s own.

“I know … I know better now,” he says, and then – “I’m gonna get you something for your hands.”

As Dan disappears to find his first aid kit, the stranger disappears into Dan's bedroom, furiously rifling through drawers.


	5. SKIN

“Excuse me,” Dreiberg chimes, head poking in halfway through the door. “What in the god-damned ever-loving **fuck** do you think you're doing, _bud?”_

Two minutes, he’d been gone. _**Two!**_ Three, _tops._ And after those arguably-two-to-three-minutes, he's come back to find his place staged up like a tornado’s gone through it – the sort of damage he’d have formerly attributed to none other than Hurricane Kovacs.

_Figures._

Drawers are fully open, pulled out, and overturned. Pillows are gutted, the mattress is up on its side against the wall with all the sheets puddling around it, kicked. Closet light is off, but the door is open, and his things – hangers and all – are being pitched out from the shadowy maw, thrown over the narrow curve of the redhead’s small, white shoulder. His lamp is broken on the floor, and he has to step over it to make his way to him. As he nears, Daniel can hear the stranger muttering to himself about his _skin._

“Stealing,” comes the eventual reply, and Dan almost laughs.

Almost.

Would've, if the stranger didn't follow himself up by forcing the lock on a trunk of keepsakes Daniel's stowed away against the wall. Horror spikes up Daniel's spine and he isn't thinking first; just charging forward, arms out, headlocking the man with a roar in a voice he doesn't recognize.

“That’s _**PERSONAL!”**_

Daniel's strong, but he's impulsive. Impulse weakens foresight. The stranger lets Daniel grab him from behind. His hands fly up, scrabbling for purchase ... but where Daniel expects him to start scratching at his arms, there’s nothing – he doesn’t see the fists clenched around the hanging-bar of his closet, doesn’t feel his captive lift himself off the ground, until it’s much too late.

The back of that curly red head meets the front of Daniel’s face as the stranger kicks off the wall and sends them both staggering backwards. A second headbutt, for added insult. There is blood in Daniel’s mouth. There is blood in Daniel’s nose. He chokes on blood as the redhead drives his elbow backwards just as they hit the ground together, cushioning his blow on Daniel’s diaphragm.

“WHERE IS IT.”

It isn’t an act of mercy, when the stranger rolls off. If it were an act of mercy, he’d not immediately re-mount him, crouching over Daniel’s face. His eyes would not be harsh and wild. He wouldn’t spit when he spoke. He would explain himself – but he doesn’t, and never intends to. Dan can tell.

Dan can always tell.

“YOU CAN’T – HAVE THAT!”

“WHERE THE HELL IS—”

“LEAVE IT ALONE! IT DOESN’T **BELONG** TO YOU _– LEAVE IT ALONE!”_

Daniel, still gagging on the blow to his chest, curls in on himself. Glares up at the redhead. Eyes full of tears. The redhead stops wrestling him; halts on top, with his hands around Dan's neck. Both of them shivering.

“Hasn’t enough been taken from me, goddammit? Can I not have this _ONE THING THAT REMINDS ME OF HIM?”_

“IT’S MINE.” Snarled. Hot breath.

A tear lands on Daniel’s cheek that isn’t Daniel’s and they stare at each other, confused. The hands squeeze, wrench, like he's trying to play him. Make him talk. Make him make noise. Make the birdy sing. They let go when a sob rips through Daniel's throat, startled by the noise.

“It’s mine. Mine. Where's my _**face**_.”

“I DON’T HAVE THAT, YOU IDIOT! I HAVE YOUR—”

Daniel is interrupted by the taste of his own snot running down his upper lip.

Rorschach touches the spot just below Daniel’s chest, where he’d stricken him. His chin quivers. The skin below his left eyelid twitches, twice, and his voice lowers, so as not to break.

“My _what,_ Daniel.” Gentler. “What do you have.”

“Your … Your _hat.”_

Rorschach's hands cup his cheeks, instead, and Daniel's face crumples like he's lost him again.


	6. STAY

Rorschach goes still against Daniel’s massive, shuddering frame, but he doesn’t fade away.

Dan’s chest hitches, and the bruises blooming under it scream in protest, putting even more weight behind the cries wracking through him. Choking, desperate sobs. Childlike. Lost. He’s pulling Rorschach close, even though he knows he’ll hate it – one moment of selfish intimacy for six long years of having gone without.

Rorschach is stagnant and expressionless, but his face burns hellfire. He doesn’t blink – not once – but doesn’t have the heart to pull himself from the arms he’s frozen in, either.

“Why are you sad?”

“Because you _DIED,”_ and Rorschach goes stiffer than before at the volume, like he isn’t sure whether he’s in trouble or not.

“Don’t cry for me,” head shaking. “Don’t cry.”

Because he doesn’t like it.

Because it makes him want to cry, too.

“I saw you **die** ,” Daniel urges, disbelieving ... but Rorschach doesn't seem to understand why that's such a bad thing, and Daniel's not going to waste any more time trying to force him to. Time is a privilege. He'd taken it for granted, before. “Saw you die,” a beat. “I’ve **_been_** crying for you.”

The exhaustion takes them both when the silence does, Daniel’s voice trailing off in defeat. He pulls back to look at Rorschach, hands on his shoulders. Stares into his face and realizes – blanching – just who he’s been sneering off in the streets. In the courtyards. At the funerals …

It never did sit well with him, leaving roses at an empty grave.

“... It _hurt._ ”

The next moment's hesitance leads Daniel to believe that it might be Rorschach, himself, who violently rips himself out of Dan's life again. Instead, Rorschach moves forward and ropes his fingers tight into Daniel’s hair, nose to nose and brow to brow. His hands ball into fists, there. Clench. Breathing his air, studying every flicker of pain and grief still burning in his eyes –

– And smiles.

“Will prove real,” he sighs, “am real. Will prove ... in reasonable manner only. Am not giving mouth to mouth.”

Daniel can’t help the laugh that bursts out of him. He can’t help that the laugh becomes a sob. He can’t help that he smiles when he cries, or that his hands gravitate to Rorschach’s cheeks, unsure even now if he’s allowed to put them there.

“Stay,” in a little voice. “Stay with me. Please.”

Rorschach exhales against him and – hiding his face in the curve of Dan’s neck – lets his eyes flutter shut.


End file.
